To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide an annual grant to facilitate an iron working training program for Native Americans.

I thank the gentlelady from Guam for yielding me this time. I also would like to thank our chairman, Nick Rahall, and Ranking Member Doc Hastings of the Natural Resources Committee for their cooperation in allowing this bill to move forward.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1129, legislation to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide annual grants for the development of regional ironworker training programs for Native Americans. Notably, an identical version of this legislation passed the House of Representatives under suspension of the rules by the 110th Congress by a vote of 302-72.

Currently, only one ironworker training program that is specifically geared towards Native Americans exists in the United States, and that is the highly successful National Ironworkers Training Program for American Indians based in Broadview, Illinois. The Broadview program has stemmed from a strong and enduring partnership between the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Ironworkers International Union, one that has lasted over 35 years.

Working in conjunction with the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers, the Broadview center provides highly specialized training in ironworking skills and related fabricating and welding shop classes and on-the-job education to Native American Indians from across the United States.

Upon completion of the program, each student possesses essential knowledge in union structure and history, OSHA safety regulations and a variety of ironworking skills, including blueprint reading and related math, arc welding and the erection of structural steel. Broadview graduates are subsequently placed as apprentices at local ironworker unions nationwide and, as a result, are afforded the opportunity to pursue productive and high-quality construction careers.

H.R. 1129 will build upon the success of the Broadview, Illinois, program by facilitating the establishment of regional ironworker training centers for Native Americans across the United States through the authorization of annual Interior Department grants. Mr. Speaker, the impetus behind the legislation is to provide occupational training to Native Americans residing in economically depressed communities, to accord them the opportunity to secure good jobs in the ironworking trade and ensure a solid future for themselves and their families.

H.R. 1129 also stems from and expands upon the ironworkers longstanding relationship with the Native American community. As a structural ironworker for 20 years, I have been a member of Iron Workers Local 7 for 30 years, and I am actually past president of that union. I am well aware of a longstanding contribution made by Native Americans to the ironworking industry.

As noted by the Ironworkers International Union and its president, Joe Hunt, Native Americans have been a part of ironworker history since 1886, when the St. Lawrence River was bridged on tribal land in Quebec and ironworkers' foremen first hired Native Americans as ironworkers.

In my own role here, as an ironworker apprentice, I worked under a number of Native American foremen and general foremen. It was a number of Native American journeymen ironworkers who taught me how to weld and gave me a chance at that trade. As an ironworker foreman and a general foreman myself, I had an opportunity to have a lot of young Native American Indians working in my crews, not only in the Boston area, but out in Indiana and Illinois, as well as New Mexico and Arizona.

And I have had a long relationship with members from the Navajo Tribe. I actually lived for a while on the Navajo Reservation, and I count those men and women as some of my closest friends, and I am greatly indebted to them. I also worked with members of the Apache Tribe and Mohawk Tribe in the New England area. This will really, I think, give a wonderful opportunity to Native Americans who have sort of adopted the ironworking industry as a family business. And it was not uncommon for me to be, as a Caucasian, a minority on a lot of the construction sites that I worked on in New Mexico and in other parts of the country where American Indians really provided the majority of the working members on those jobs.

Again, I would like to thank Chairman Rahall and Ranking Member Hastings for their wonderful support on this legislation, also, Member Dale Kildee, who has also put his shoulder to the wheel on this bill.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 1129.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1129) to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide an annual grant to facilitate an iron working training program for Native Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1129 would authorize appropriations for an Interior Department program that makes grants available to fund a Native American ironworker training program. The appropriations for this program have been made for many years, and this program provides both classroom and on-the-job ironwork training for members of federally recognized Indian tribes.

This program would also facilitate job placements for those tribal members who successfully complete the requirements of the program.

With unemployment rates rising to a staggering rate of over 80 percent on some Indian reservations, this program is desperately needed. The ironworker training program provides Native American participants with the knowledge and the ability to join a skilled labor force as a career.

I want to commend our colleague Mr. Lynch of Massachusetts for his hard work and dedication to this legislation, and I ask my colleagues to support its passage.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the sponsor of this bill, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, I again urge Members to support this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1129, which will create an ironworking program for Native Americans. The manager for the majority has effectively explained the bill, but I would like to make a few additional comments.

This country is suffering from record unemployment, but few areas are feeling the effects of job loss worse than Indian country. I hope that when Native Americans complete the training available through this program that we're authorizing today in this bill, jobs will be available for them.

Unfortunately, if the Environmental Protection Agency has any say, there will be a lot fewer jobs. One of the first major actions taken by the EPA under the Obama administration was to seek to revoke a key permit issued in 2008 to

the Navajo Nation for the construction of a 1,500-megawatt power plant employing the most advanced clean coal technology available today. This is the Desert Rock project.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley said that Desert Rock would create ``500 permanent jobs at union wages on a reservation with an unemployment rate hovering around 50 percent.''

This is an example that every community in America should follow, but it's an example lost on the Democrat leadership of this House. I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle consider that job training makes sense only when those jobs are available.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, July 7, 2009, I missed rollcall votes Nos. 478 and 479 and on Wednesday, July 8, 2009, I missed rollcall votes Nos. 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, and 488. I missed these rollcall votes due to having the flu.

Had I been present for rollcall 478, on motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Con. Res. 135, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 479, on motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 1129, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 480, on agreeing to the resolution H. Res. 610 providing for consideration of H.R. 2965, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 481, on motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended H.R. 1278, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 482, on motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 1945, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 483, on agreeing to the Kosmas Amendment to H.R. 2965, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 484, on agreeing to the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to H.R. 2965, I would have voted ``aye.''

Had I been present for rollcall 488, on motion to adjourn, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in Room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a business meeting on S.J. Res. 14, a joint resolution to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States; H.R. 1129, a bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide an annual grant to facilitate an iron working training program for Native Americans; and S. 443, a bill to transfer certain land to the United States to be held in trust for the Hoh Indian Tribe, to place land into trust for the Hoh Indian Tribe, and for other purposes to be followed immediately by a hearing on S. 1011, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.